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Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Welcome to Dany Sirene

I'm always delighted to meet new people on my blog, and today it's the turn of Dany Sirene.

Over to you, Dany.

How did you get started writing?

A long time ago I started school and they taught me all those letters and words. It was a love affair. Seriously, though, I mainly wrote for myself and a few close friends until a couple years ago, when I gathered my courage and sent a short story to a magazine. It got accepted, and things just took off from there.

Was there a particular author or book that made you decide you wanted to write in the genre? If so, who or what was it?

It was a serial story I stumbled upon online. I didn’t think I was much of a romance reader, but I started reading it and just couldn’t stop until I had finished. After that, the first thing I did was look for more like it! That was how I found, among others, Dreamspinner Press, and with it, all the M/M romance I could ask for. Meanwhile, my own writing projects were not going anywhere, and after yet another story stalled, I realized I had just gotten bored with the genre I was writing in. And then one day a pair of characters popped up in my head and nagged me until I wrote their story down.

Where do you write? Does your environment have an impact on what or how you write?

I wish I could say that every morning I take my seat at my ginormous polished oak writing desk facing a floor-to-ceiling window with a breathtaking view of some exotic locale. The reality is that I sit down at my tiny Ikea desk, at a laptop that has seen better days, brew a pot of Earl Grey and write. Oddly, this is the environment I work best in. I’d like to be able to write in coffee shops like the trendy people with their Macs, but I’m embarrassed. In the heat of the writing process I tend to make faces and murmur to myself like a crazy lady.

What do you love most about writing? What do you hate about it?

What I love? I love that moment when you suddenly see your future story clearly from beginning to end, and your hands start to itch for the keyboard. I love it when I write emotional or tense or sweet moments and my heart races. What I hate? Hmm. The achy eyes. That’s about it.

How did you come up with the title?

I find it really hard to come up with a good title. I usually don’t title my work until after it’s finished and edited. Well, Lau is a fire demiurge, so I wanted something to do with “playing with fire”... which is fitting, given his personality.

Can you tell us about your main character?

Lau is a demiurge who is punished by being reincarnated as a human. He doesn’t cope too well with the loss of his powers. He is kind of a bastard in a lot of his words and actions all the way until the end, and sure, bad stuff happens to him—but he comes to realize he brought most of it on himself. And by the time he is ready to change his ways and learn from his mistakes, it may already be too late.

How did you develop your plot and characters?

Thing is, I was writing an entirely different story (I think it was for NaNoWriMo) where a fallen demiurge was one of the secondary characters. So a couple of chapters in, it suddenly hit me that the demiurge character interested me more than my central plot! I realized I was writing the wrong story. So I started over, focusing on Lau. I love the theme of pride before the fall and all its implications, so I just worked from there.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m in the middle of a novel set in Moscow, about a New Russian golden boy and his (much) lower class love interest. Also, there is an outline of another deity-themed paranormal in the works, but we’ll see how that goes.

To date, what has been the best advice or words of encouragement you've received?

Butt in chair, hands on keyboard! From Brandon Sanderson’s podcast Writing Excuses. It’s a bit... simplistic, sure, but in the long run it’s the only advice that really works.

What are three things about you that would surprise your fans?

Technically, English is my third language. For some reason, I don’t write too well in the other two.

For all my interest in the dark and spooky, I’m utterly terrified of horror movies.

Initially, my program in college was... finance. That didn’t last very long, since I am completely inept where numbers are concerned.

Where can we find you on the web?

There’s my official blog: http://sirenesong.blogspot.com/

I am still working on the website, so in the meantime this is where all the news, buy links and other official business can be found. Also, there is about a kiloton of excerpts and free short stories, and the occasional contest.

I am on Goodreads more often than not:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5107576.Dany_Sirene

I have a Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/dany.sirene

And finally, a very informal (you’ve been warned!) LiveJournal:

http://sirene-perdue.livejournal.com/

Dany's Bio:

Dany Sirene
is an aspiring writer who lives and studies in Montreal, city of horrible
winters and beautiful cemeteries. She is an avid reader of dark fantasy and
horror, and loves a (not so) good anti-hero. She's been writing since she
learned to hold a pen (and later, a keyboard), and can spend days immersed in
entirely fictional worlds, her own or someone else's, emerging only to check
her email and feed the cat. Some people find it a little strange. Sometimes she
agrees.

Blurb:

Fire demiurge Lau had it made until
the Mother Goddess banished him for his cruel treatment of humans. Now he’s
stuck in a mortal life, trying to cope without his powers—mainly by partying
hard and seducing anything with a heartbeat.

Then he meets Jesse Warner.

College student Jesse is new to
Montreal. Out from under his parents’ thumbs for the first time, he can’t wait
to begin to discover who he really is. He has no idea what’s really at stake
when he falls in love with the former demiurge... until a powerful being with a
grudge shows up, ready to destroy them both.

Jesse could feel Lau
watching him from the bed and didn’t even need to turn around to picture that
sly little smile of his, the narrowed eyes, biting down on his lower lip,
probably. It made a very pleasant shiver run down his spine, and his cock
stirred in his boxer shorts. Come on now, he reminded himself, this stuff was
due tomorrow, and he hadn’t even started. He could let Lau have his way with
him once he was done, as a reward. A little delayed gratification was good for
your health, right?

“Come back here,” Lau
purred. Making it difficult, then. Jesse smiled to himself.

“Sorry.” He could barely
keep from laughing. “Some of us have exams coming up, you know.”

“Pfff. Exams. You’re way
too pretty to have to take exams.”

“Too bad, but my professor
is straight. At least I think he is.” He chuckled.

“You’d convert him in a
heartbeat.”

“What? You wouldn’t be
jealous?” He retrieved his backpack from the corner where he’d tossed it and
took out his Theology 101 textbook and his battered notebook and pen.

“Me, jealous? Like there’s
anyone at that school of yours who could compete with me.”

Jesse smiled, somewhat
uneasily. “In fact, no one at that school knows,”
he said. “At least didn’t, until you laid one on me in front of the whole
humanities department.”

Whatever he was thinking,
that particular memory instantly made him hard. He was angry at himself for it…
but not too much, he decided, glancing over his shoulder at Lau who’d hopped
out of bed, gloriously naked and without even a trace of self-consciousness.
He’d said he’d meet him after class, and Jesse thought he was just teasing or
would forget and flake out like he was known for doing, and put it out of his
mind. Much to his surprise, Lau did turn up outside of Ancient Religions class,
in full attack gear complete with low-slung army pants that sat just a quarter
of an inch too low under his hipbones and the ubiquitous Flammable T-shirt that
showed off his belly button ring. And before Jesse even had a chance to pick
his jaw up off the floor, he’d practically dipped him in a classic old-movie
kiss.

His first reaction was to
get so hard it was a wonder his zipper held up. His second reaction was to wish
the earth would split beneath him and swallow him whole.

“Watch it,” he murmured
into Lau’s mouth, feeling himself turning red with both arousal and
embarrassment. “Remember, if this gets back to my dad, I’m toast….”

Lau had laughed. “No one
here cares. Get used to it.”

And now, his reaction was
the same—a careless shrug. “Knows what?”

Jesse tried to focus on the
text. “That I’m… you know.”

“Geez, do you people always
have to categorize everything?”

“Most people do like to categorize,
yes.” Jesse sighed impatiently. “And you live in their world, so as they say,
when in Rome….”

Lau howled with laughter.
“Some analogy. You study all this historical stuff. You should know what they
were up to in Rome before the Christians got there and spoiled the party.”

Jesse raised his eyebrows.
He didn’t think Lau had so much as a GED. Meanwhile, unfazed, Lau sauntered up
to him and hugged him from behind, resting his chin on Jesse’s shoulder. “So
what’s this thing about?”

“Theology.” Jesse had to
admit he didn’t mind having him in that position. His soft red hair brushed
against his cheek, his neck, and his shoulder. It was distracting but much too
pleasant to tell him to stop.

“Lau, why don’t you go to
school?”

“Me?” He chuckled. “What
the hell do I need school for?” Teasingly, he nibbled on Jesse’s earlobe. “Are
you saying I’m dumb?”

“No, exactly. You’re smart,
I know it. You could do very well if you wanted to.”

Jesse laughed, rolling his
eyes. “Come on now, you have to have some kind of bigger aspirations in life.”

“Nah. Life’s too damn
short.”

Jesse wasn’t sure what to
say to that when Lau’s hand slipped down his bare chest and then traced the
line of pale hair down from his navel. Blood instantly flowed away from his
brain. Damn. How did he do that?

Having gotten the effect he
wanted, Lau wrapped his hand around Jesse’s cock.

“I… really… should be doing
my homework,” Jesse panted. But that was purely rhetorical at this point. Lau
began to move his hand up and down, slowly tightening his grip.

Jesse relaxed, letting his
head fall back on Lau’s shoulder. The smell of his hair enveloped him, shampoo
and skin and soap and pure sex. He let his eyes close, giving himself over to
the sensation. Lau took his time, and the orgasm felt like it would never end.
When his muscles stopped contracting, an eternity later, Lau gave him a quick
peck on the cheek and started to pick his clothes up off the floor.

“Where are you going?”
asked Jesse, too disoriented to really think.

“Letting you do your
schoolwork. Wouldn’t want to be a bad influence.”